Jonathan's Blog

Monday, February 17, 2014

One of the great things about community development projects
is that they give you a chance to work with men who you might not see
otherwise. Maybe they live far from you or maybe they are not interested
in what you are teaching, but because there is an opportunity to earn money
they come and you have a chance to build relationships.

Most days I had between 30 and 50 workers. It was a
great time to strengthen old relationships and build new ones. These guys
worked hard and needed a good solid morning and afternoon snack. In the
village we can’t order pizza, so Heidi took on the responsibility of providing
food.

Fortunately Heidi had help. Arcely really uses her
head when it comes to feeding people and with her help everything came
together.

She sent men to get coconuts to make coconut oil

Coconut oil and sticky rice were used to make a variety of
sticky rice treats.

Once the snacks arrived on the work site, they didn't last
long.

The afternoon snack was usually served under our house

Thank you Heidi for all the hard work you and Arcely
did! It was appreciated by all.

There is a lady in town who has a hardware store. When
I am in town I can deposit money in her bank account and she will get boats to
haul cement to the village for me. When I arrived in the village I found
81 bags of cement waiting for me. That was great, but I needed 15 cubic
meters of sand and gravel to mix with it.

In the village, sand and gravel come from the river. Getting the gravel and hauling it to the school is a lot of work. As you can see, the work site is much higher than the river.

First the workers had to find a good spot to get a bucket or
a sack of gravel that didn't have rocks that were too large.

Then they had to carry it up the steep path to the school.

It took a lot of strength and it was amazing how much gravel
was carried.

Once the gravel was at the top of the hill, each carrier
made his or her own pile. Every afternoon we shoveled the piles into a
large cracker can which is the standard unit of measure for gravel here.
Heidi kept a tally and when all the piles were counted the haulers followed her
home for a snack and their pay.

The sand was then measured again into a volcano shaped pile,
cement was added, and mixed by shovel. It is backbreaking work.

Finally buckets of cement are poured onto the forms and the
experts put on the finishing touches.

On our last full day in the village, the workers had
completed not just the pads for the posts, but all the flooring, stairs from
the school to the playground, and a rock path. I couldn't believe
it. What a blessing to see so much progress!

Getting a concrete pad on the ground is an amazing feat, but it is just the start. When I asked Bob Hall, an Australian contractor with experience building in the Philippines if he could help me design the covered play area, I asked him to make it as typhoon proof as possible. He did and this translated into tons of iron. Iron in the concrete bolted to iron posts. Bolted to iron trusses.

20 foot long pieces of re-bar don’t fit in the helicopter very well, so the workers in town had a clever way of using a barrel to roll the re-bar into coils.

Of course, the concrete workers didn't want to use rolled pieces of re bar, so I had to pay 4 guys to hammer it straight again. Rolling re-bar and straightening it out again turns out to be a good way to create jobs.

The helicopter tried flying posts into the village last January and decided it wasn't a good idea so the rest of the materials were loaded on a truck and sent to a town downstream from our village. This happened after we were already in the village.

One day when we were in the village we were told that boats
were coming with our building materials. What a surprise. The boats
are small, but can carry around 300 pounds of cargo. The boat guys push
them up the stream to our village because the water is so shallow.

The boat guys unloaded the cargo at the bottom of the hill
near the school. All the posts were there and most of the trusses.

On our last full day in the village, a crew of men carried the rest of the iron to the top of the hill. Either the guys have a lot of faith in the wooden bridge planks or they didn't think about how much weight they were putting in one place.

The team worked all morning.

By noon, everything was stacked neatly on the work site and
by late afternoon, all the concrete work was finished. Heidi and I
arrived home on Saturday afternoon and on Monday I heard that the last pieces of
the structure had been sent upstream. I talked to Bob Hall this morning
and he is planning to come and construct the building this spring. What
an answer to prayer it is to be able to tell him, “Come any time, the concrete
is down and all the materials are on site.”

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

One of the best things about being on home assignment is getting to spend time with friends and family. A couple of Sundays ago we were at Hood Canal Community Church for the morning service and were blessed to spend time with the Endicott family. We enjoyed going on an afternoon outing with Lucy. These pictures are from her camera.

It was raining when we left the house, but as Lucy said that if we went high enough in elevation, the rain would turn to snow.

Don't worry, I only eat white snow.

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We all enjoyed being cold for a few minutes and then were happy to head down to lower elevations.﻿﻿﻿

Fortunately, by the time we got down the mountain it had stopped raining.

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We traveled to the far end of Lake Cushman and visited Staircase, Olympic National Park.

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The Big Cedar was not as tall as it was the last time I saw it.

At the park we looked back up into the moutains and enjoyed the setting sun shining on the new snow.

Then we headed back down the mountain to spend a great evening with our friends at Family Bible Fellowship.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

On the last day of May, we said goodbye to our
pink house with green doors and orange trim. The floors inside were painted
red. The walls, we won’t talk about the walls. It is very sad, but the truth
is, we may never get to stay in such a colorful house again.

It seems Carrie planned her graduation on the
same day we moved out.Or, was it
Thomas… or was it Heidi.

To celebrate Carrie’s graduation from high
school we went on a trip to the beach with some friends of ours and had a great
time except for the part where the waves were crashing into the boat on the way
over.

One of Carrie’s friends was baptized while we
were there so we provided a little music for the occasion.

This is a warning:If you spend too much time on Facebook or if
you have a teenager advising you on how to pose for the camera you end up doing
this sort of thing.

Picture from Carl Stevens

All beach trips come
to an end and you must go back to work.After the beach we went north and worked with three Isnag ladies, our
partner, Vicky, and my consultant, Ginny, to check the Isnag version of the book
of Mark and two chapter of Luke.The
other day a five year old told me that she was not five, she was five and a
half.I feel like I’m being a bit like
that when I mention the two chapters of Luke.The check was six very taxing days, but we all survived and Ginny was pleased
with the end product including the two chapters of Luke.

With the translation
check complete it was time to say goodbye to the Philippines.We are always happy if we arrive at the
airport with all of our bags, tickets, passports, and plenty of time to pass
all the security inspections.

We didn’t think we
had signed up for first class, but when they passed out the airplane food we
began to wonder.They wouldn’t give
Yakult to economy class passengers, would they?

When we landed in Portland, Charles, our
oldest son surprised us by meeting us at the airport.Thomas, our youngest, counter surprised him
by being much taller than Charles expected.

We have enjoyed
seeing all of our family members.This
is my Grandma and my recently arrived niece Sarah.I have been a good uncle for many years, but
Sarah has managed to make me a great uncle.

We have also enjoyed many family times with
Heidi’s side of the family.This is
Sara, Heidi’s sister and Heidi.

After the wedding we only had enough time to
unpack our suitcases and repack for a trip to Georgia and points beyond. Carrie
and Thomas are both anxious to get their driver’s licensees.We thought that maybe starting the training
by being the captain of a canoe would be a good place to start.

(These two pictures from Dawn Parker)

One of our first stops was Monroe Baptist
church where we got to speak to the children and adults.

The kids were a great audience.The adults were pretty good too.Heidi is passing out souvenirs from the
Philippines.

A couple of days later we arrived at Ft. Jackson where James was due to graduate from Army basic training.One of the first things we noticed is that
everyone in this tribe dresses alike.The chiefs are very bossy and there are a lot more men than women. It was
interesting to note that when one guy started walking all of the other guys
quietly followed him and the first guy never looked back or noticed that he was
being followed.

Everyone looked alike, but we finally found
James and enjoyed family day and graduation day with him.

After graduation, we took James to Virginia
where he started training for EOD (Bomb squad).

In mid September, James will finish his first
phase of training and move to Florida to finish his EOD training.

After dropping off
James, we drove to S. Carolina and visited the Howard family and then flew home
to Washington via Washington DC.Two Washingtons in one day!A couple weeks later, Heidi’s sister, Robin, and
family came down from Alaska to spend two weeks with us.During that time we had many reunions with
family and friends. (The red type is the computer's way of saying I don't know English grammar.)

Heidi with her nephews and the Blackstad boys.

This is a picture of our new musical group,
The Three Bamford Twins.We are hoping
to add a twin or two.

This is a picture of my brothers,
Tom, Mike, David w/ Sara, myself, and my father, John.